Why I Track My Numbers

There's a load of posts going round at the moment about why you shouldn't track your views or focus on them. But I am a STAT TRACKER and I am PROUD! (cringe)

ANYWAY here's why!





I want to say first, that I write a blog because I enjoy it. I've always enjoyed writing from a young age, and after one failed blog attempted I thought I would just DO IT. I didn't do it so I could get sent free stuff, or build a career out of it. That was not my intention, and I'm not knocking people that did, but I already have a career planned out and blogging was not really going to be part of it. But I do think that improving my writing has been a helpful thing to chat about in interviews. So it may have actually helped.

But despite not trying to use my blog to become the next Zoella I do still love to track my numbers, to make sure they're heading in the right direction and if they're not... why? 

I am a bit of a numbers geek. I hate maths and struggle with simple sums, but I just find watching numbers grow and shrink fascinating. I've actually just come up with a brilliant idea for a new spreadsheet regarding this whole subject, so that's a winner.  But I enjoy seeing how my Twitter followers go up after specific chats, seeing how my blogs get more views dependant on what hashtags or RT accounts  I use.

I think this is important to develop blog growth as you can see what is working for you and what might not be working, which is always useful. I think you can also see what kind of posts work the best with your readership, although you don't of course always have to listen to these. I will always write what I want, but can fine tune it to what you guys like to read as well.

However, I do know that not everybody likes to track their views, some people can get bogged down if they don't make the views that they want, or some posts aren't as popular as they'd like. I say stuff it (or use a different word for stuff...). You can always tell if your posts don't come from the heart and you are writing them half-heartedly, so it's important to take results with a pinch of salt. I do it because I know I'm not going to let them get to me, but if blogging is your full time career I can see how low views could really impact you.


So how do I track my views? As I said in my Bullet Journal post I have a couple of tracker pages for both Bloglovin and Twitter. Every day before I go to bed I fill in what my followers and numbers are at the end of the day. This is my favourite double page in the whole journal and I just feel so much satisfaction from filling it in. I also write little aims and goals along side the chart thing of things I've achieved and goals I've smashed. As I also said in my BuJo post I wanted to design a sort of graph in my Bullet Journal to make it a bit more visual but I have no idea how to do it.

I know everybody says that Bloggers view counts aren't the most reliable, but I just cannot get to grips with Google Analytics! I've read several posts on the subject, a lot written by the wonderful Corinne but I just can't understand why the numbers are so much small than on Blogger? Send help this way please! But if I keep using blogger I still learn how much they grow and shrink accordingly.

I just wanted to write this post so people like me that love to track numbers don't feel like they shouldn't be! I love tracking my stats and I intend to keep on continuing to do so!

Do you track your views? How do you do it?